Reanimating Heresies will bring together digital humanists, periodical studies scholars, historians, social movement researchers, art historians, and other scholars interested to think through and with Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics (1977-1992). Our goal is to respond to scholarly questions and methodological challenges around archives and digital research practices. We are inspired by recent feminist engagement with archives, and by including what British sociologist Rachel Thomson describes as “the re-use of materials from the past” (2022). By encouraging cross-generational and interdisciplinary scholars, artists, and activists to reflect collectively about Heresies, we explore major questions about the recent feminist past and its relationship to the contemporary activist and scholarly moment.
First conceived by feminist artists and art workers in New York 1975, Heresies was—and indeed, remains—an exciting experiment in feminist publishing. Members of the Heresies Collective included artists, artworkers, journalists, art historians, filmmakers, all of whom were politically active in a broad range of activist circles. Over a period of 13 years, the Collective produced 27 issues on topics as vital and often groundbreaking as Feminism and Ecology, Lesbian Art and Artists, Third World Women, The Great Goddess, and The Politics of Aesthetics. Heresies is an index of feminist thinking and activity in this tumultuous period for the broader North American feminist movement.
Reanimating Heresies recognizes the impact and influence of Heresies on feminist art, feminist activism, and feminist movements from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. We position Heresies as a common ground for researchers from diverse disciplines who work with a range of methodological approaches. The event is not an occasion to celebrate Heresies uncritically. Heresies was committed to process, change, dialogue, and self-reflection. Reanimating Heresies takes inspiration from these commitments and encourages contributions from emerging and established scholars, researchers, artists, and practitioners in the archives and publishing to gather to discuss issues related to the production, circulation, and reception of Heresies. Heresies becomes a shared starting point around which interdisciplinary researchers can learn with and from one another.
We use the term “reanimating” as it is defined by British sociologists involved in the Reanimating Data project. Rachel Thomson, for instance, defines reanimation in this way: “Re-animation [is] a term which captures the liveness of the original data and the possibilities of making this available to new audiences in new contexts to be animated in new ways” (2023, reanimatingdata.co.uk). What lessons can we take from Heresies, from recent scholarship on Heresies, and from emerging methods for studying this and other historical texts? What can be learned about Heresies, and more generally, the recent feminist past, when we approach it in a radically interdisciplinary fashion?
We encourage proposals that focus on innovative methodologies, including new feminist approaches to archives and digital humanities. We encourage participants to revisit or visit for the first time the Heresies digital archive available at www.heresiesfilmproject.org, the fully-encoded Heresies Project text archive at https://leaf.bucknell.edu/heresies, and the archive of feminist-movement advertisement images that originated with Heresies ads at https://lincsproject.ca/docs/explore-lod/project-datasets/adarchive/.
The conference will include interactive engagement with Heresies via participatory exhibitions, including an introduction to the new digital archives featuring Heresies linked above and an exciting opportunity to contribute to the archives. We also encourage creative engagements with Heresies via art exhibits, posters, or other artistic endeavours. We especially welcome proposals from students and emerging researchers, scholars, and artists.
We welcome proposals for 10 or 20 minute paper presentations, posters, or creative work in any format on a wide range of topics, including but certainly not limited to the following:
Digitizing Heresies - Heresies at LINCS, Bucknell, and beyond
Teaching with Heresies, or Falling in Love with Heresies (and other periodicals) - introducing students to the recent feminist past
Looking at the margins, learning from marginalia - advertisements, tables of contents, editorials
The position of Heresies in an ecosystem of feminist publishing, including comparative analyses
Reflections on the feminist praxis of the Heresies Collective: lessons learned from the recent feminist past
In the archive with Heresies - the Heresies Collective collection at Rutgers
Art and artists in Heresies: cartoons, collages, murals, imagery, etc.
Examining the economics of feminist publishing
New encounters and entanglements: Reanimating data as a method for learning with and from Heresies
Achronic correspondence - affective intergenerational encounters
Feminist Objects
Afterlives of Heresies: Heresies’ influence on next-gen art, publishing, and culture
Feminist time travels
Intergenerational distances, intergenerational bridges
500-word proposals should be submitted via this Google form before January 15th, 2025. Funding may be available to support travel by graduate students or independent researchers. Papers may be selected for inclusion in a publication of conference proceedings.
The symposium will be held June 8-10, 2025 at Bucknell University, which is located in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and accessible via Harrisburg Airport. The symposium is organized by Diane Jakacki (Bucknell University), Jana Smith Elford (Medicine Hat College, Canada), and Michelle Meagher (University of Alberta, Canada). For more information, or to ask questions about the event, please reach out to us at reanimatingheresies2025@gmail.com.